Daily Tech News 19 August 2021

• Researchers have taken a closer look at Apple's Neural Hash - the one they'll use to throw you in jail for child porn - and have already generated a hash collision. (GitHub)
  
  A hash collision is where two totally different sets of data produce identical results when run through a particular algorithm.
  
  This is the 1-in-a-trillion chance Apple was talking about.
  
  Apple now says this is not the real algorithm, which totally doesn't have this problem, and that they'll also use a second algorithm to double-check before throwing you to the wolves. You wouldn't know the second algorithm, it lives in Canada.
  
  
  

• Do you people want consent decrees? Because this is how you get consent decrees. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Microsoft is fucking around in Windows making it harder to change your default browser. In fact, there no longer even is a default browser; there's a different selection of each file type and protocol, and you have to change them all individually.
  
  
  
• Intel's next-next-gen Raptor Lake desktop CPUs will have up to 24 cores. (WCCFTech)
  
  8 real ones and 16 low-power and low-performance cores.
  
  I don't know why, but it's plausible they can't currently add more high-performance cores and stay within their power budget. The last two generations of Intel desktop parts have been notoriously power-hungry and it doesn't sound like the new chips will improve on that.
  
  Their laptop parts aren't such a problem.
  
  
  
• The US Census Bureau got hacked-ish in January of last year. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Only ish, because an investigation has showed that the hackers were able to exploit a bug in Citrix to gain access, but the system is such a bureaucratic nightmare to use that they gave up at that point and went away.
  
  
  
• 48.6 million current and former T-Mobile users are going to have a bad day. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They've confirmed they were indeed hacked. No phone numbers, passwords, or financial data were leaked. Just your full name, date of birth, SSN, and driver's license.
  
  So that's alright then.
  
  
  
• TSMC is now the most valuable company in Asia. (CNBC)
  
  With China hell-bent on destroying its own economy and demand for chips at record highs, TSMC's market cap has remained solid while Tencent and Alibaba have gone into sharp decline.
  
  TSMC is unusual in this field in that they make stuff themselves, and they are very, very good at it.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:39 AM

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